My first exposure to Support Vector Machines came this spring when heard Sue Dumais present impressive results on text categorization using this analysis technique. This issue's collection of essays should help familiarize our readers with this interesting new racehorse in the Machine Learning stable. Bernhard Scholkopf, in an introductory overview, points out that a particular advantage of SVMs o...
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Work is underway to enhance SAP's R/3 business software suite with a sales configuration engine. With the SCE, which is out in a beta version to select customers, users will be able to deal with configurable products on either a laptop or attached to R/3. The author gives an outlook on the general problem of adding a sales configurator to SAP's R/3 business software suite and outline specific work...
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Modern communications equipment is highly modular and can scale to a wide range of applications. Usually, the equipment's cost and complexity requires that it be manufactured to order, or at least assembled-to-order. In this context, orders double as specifications, describing what should be manufactured as well as how the product should be installed. Producing a correct and complete order for suc...
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The authors used generative constraint satisfaction as the basis for Lava, an automated configuration they developed for the complex domain of telephone switching systems. They built Lava using Cocos, their knowledge-based configuration tool
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Online communication has put global knowledge at year fingertips, crossing time zones and boundaries at whirlwind speeds (depending on your local connection). However, unless you know the language of the people with whom you want to communicate, you could be out of luck. If you're reading this article, you almost certainly speak English, but what about French, Spanish, German, and Portuguese? You ...
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Resource balancing avoids the knowledge-base maintenance bottlenecks inherent in many rule-based configuration approaches. Domain knowledge is based directly on technical relationships. Control knowledge is needed only to fine-tune the configuration process
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At the Dartmouth Robotics Laboratory, we have a vision of the future: a modular robot that can assume a snake shape to traverse a tunnel, reconfigure upon exiting as a six-legged robot to traverse rough terrain, and change shape and gait to climb stairs and enter a building. The key to such versatility is self-reconfiguration-a new way of thinking about robots that offers a rich class of questions...
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Over the past few years, programmers have used proprietary authoring tools and file formats (such as Macromedia's Director) to develop multimedia applications for desktop computers. They have used CD-ROM disks and, more recently, DVD disks to distribute these applications that mix text, graphics, audio, and video content. Today, the World Wide Web competes with CD-ROMs and DVDs to distribute multi...
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Since its formation in 1980, MIT's Media Laboratory has become one of the premier hubs of technology innovation, transforming computers from dumb, stationary boxes into perceptive, mobile devices of all sorts. Research includes merging computer networks with entertainment; interactive computer interfaces (such as face and gesture recognition); building environments for collaboration, news collecti...
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Intelligent systems that central physical tasks all need to turn intent into action. The end result is the generation of controlled motion, whether it's for an industrial process, the movement of a machine or vehicle, or movement of a mechanism for a specific function. In this context, RedZone Robotics has developed the Distributed Control System, a low-level distributed controller. Originally des...
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The manufacturing trend toward mass customization has awakened a great interest in automatic product configuration techniques. The authors review the literature on this topic, discussing the most representative knowledge-based approaches
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